0-6-0 Steam Locomotives in Korea

Class 100 (Locobase 21182)

Data from DeGolyer, Volume 27, pp. 4, 249. See also Fred Arthur Mackenzie, "Chapter III-How Japan Came to Korea" in The Unveiled East (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1907) , pp. 33-42; Janet Hunter, Japanese Government Policy, Business ;Opinion and the Seoul-Pusan Railway, 1894-1906, Modern Asian Studies, Volume 11, No. 4 (1977), pp. 573-599; and Nakano Akira, "Korea's Railway Network the Key to Imperial Japan's Control", Article ID 2533, Asia-Pacific Journal, Volume 5, Issue 9 (3 September 2007), pp. and

Works numbers reflect two orders for H Frazar & Company.

Seoul-Fusan Railway:

23728, 23731, 23762 in February 1904; 23941-23944, 23963-23964, 23974-23975, 23983-23985, 23995, 24005, 24018 in March; 24025, 24032, 24045-24046, 24053-

24055, 24062-24064 in April;

and

Antung-Mukden Military Railway:

24578-24579, 24592-24597, 24609-24613, 24624-24628, 24635-24637, 24642 in August 1904; 24653-24655 in September, 25215-25219,25229-25230, 25265-25267, 25277-25278, 25285-25287, 25308-25309, 25322-25325, 25336-25341 in March 1905

These light railways operated in Korea when that peninsula was a Japanese possession they had renamed Chosen. F A McKenzie noted the Japanese had been interested in controlling the Korean peninsula as far back as 1876. At first, the Korean king granted concessions through a variety of treaties with the European Powers, Britain, France, and Japan. Intrigues (including the murder of Korean Queen Min in 1895) and cross-purposes raised and lowered Japan's pre-eminence for the next , but, in legal terms, only the Chinese could claim an obscure claim and the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895 settled that issue.

At the turn of the century, Japan had acquired control of the Gyengbu Line then envisaged as the trunk line between Seoul and Pusan, a key port on the southeastern end of the peninsula. By 1904, wrote McKenzie, Korea had come to "represent[s] Japan's greated colonial experiment." Nakono Akira quoted Seo Min Kyo, a member of a Truth Commission established decades later, concerning the impact:

"When the Russo-Japanese War began, Korea essentially fell into the hands of the Japanese army and colonization developed.

At the war's outbreak in February 1904, the Japanese forced the Korean government to further cede control to any area deemed necessary for military purposes. This came to include construction of a lightly built narrow military railroad across northwestern Korea from Mukden to Antung, a port on the Yellow Sea.

Baldwin had produced single copies of the Baldwin class 04-12 D tank design for a variety of industrial customers, but most ran on the 3-foot gauge. The Korean railway proved to be the only large-scale order the class would attract.

It remained in use as a dedicated line to supply the Japanese military even after the standard--gauge mainline was opened by the Chosen Government Railways in 1906.